China's Urban Old-age Insurance System Under The Tendency Of Population Ageing

Old-age insurance system is the basic form to ensure the living standard of old-age people in most countries. In the process of global population ageing, old-age insurance becomes more and more important, and is confronted with much greater challenges. Compared with the developed countries, the population ageing in China has characteristics of speediness, and they bring serious troubles to China's old-age insurance system, which is in the initial construction stage. Therefore, it is necessary for us to make investigations in this field.The theme of this dissertation is to discuss the process and tendency of population ageing, the impact of population ageing on old-age insurance system and the response measures the system should take. The dissertation focuses on the response measures that China's old-age insurance system should take in the process of population ageing at present and in the long-term future.The historical and comparison methods are used to investigate the development of old-age insurance system. Meanwhile, the theoretic research and demonstration method are used to study the problems of China's urban old-age insurance system, and some suggestions are made on the corresponding politics that should be taken.The research is organized on the following five aspects.Firstly, as the result of population reproduction mode changing, population ageing is an irreversible tendency of demographic transition. It is a process of mortality rate and birthrate decline from high to low lever. Initially, two rates are both high, then, birthrate slows down, so that the natural population growth rate slows down, and demographic transition tends to be with low mortality rate, low birth rate and longevity, which makes population ageing become an irreversible tendency. The influence of population ageing on savings, labor force supply and technological advances will bring negative effects to the economic growth.Secondly, the reasons and characteristics of population ageing in China. China turned to be ageing society in the beginning of this century, and will enter its most serious period in the middle of the century. The rapid population ageing is the result of two factors, one is Family Planning policy that Chinese government has adopted since the 1970s; the other is that China's population birthrate has been slowing down in accompany with the economic growth, which accords with global demographic transition tendency. However, China's population ageing has its own characteristics. Compared with developed and emerging industrial countries, the population ageing speed is faster, and imbalance between different regions.Thirdly, the evolution of western old-age insurance system. Modern old-age insurance system came into being in the industrialization period in the Western Europe. Economic development and population age structure are two important external factors that greatly affect development of the system. The development of old-age insurance system has its own rules. Knowing the factors and rules is quite useful for us to construct China's old-ageing insurance system.Fourthly, China's urban old-age insurance system. The process and framework of China's urban old-age insurance system reform are studied in this article. Based on the analysis of direct and indirect influences the population ageing have been brought to China's urban old-age insurance system,the policy sugestions are raised, which are the government should construct multi-layer old-age insurance system, enlarge R&D input and increase human capital investment to response the population ageing.Finally, the characteristics of China's labor market and the perfecting of old-age insurance system. China's urban labor force participation rate is in a trend of declining, which shows that the utilization rate of labor force is falling.In the tendency of rapid population ageing, it is meaningful to find ways to making full use of labor force resources and provide the employees with old-age insurance. Employees in Private Enterprises, Sole Proprietors and informal enterprises,the peasant- workers are playing more and more important roles in the labor force market, however the old-age insurance participation rate of these employees is quite low, thus the system should be adjusted and improved according to the characteristics of these employees.In conclusion, the old-age insurance system is in great need of further development. To solve the transition cost problem of the old-age insurance system is the prerequisite. Then, the government must keep rapid economic development, enlarge employment, enhance the use of labor force recourses, Based on the measures mentioned above, enlarge the coverage of the system. In the long period, R&D input and human capital investment should be increased in order to narrow negative influence caused by population ageing.